Interesting but not as progressive as I had hoped for - I would have appreciated more analysis of capitalism and power myself.

Not so much a brilliant expose as much as exposing that the author is extremely naive and that most of is didn't already realise that most leaders are incompetent or corrupt.

This is a rather strange book. The author, a US lawyer, seems to have had involvement in privatisation programmes in various developing economies, and specialises in developing financial skills for such countries. He relates stories of some of his experiences over an unspecified number of years which he uses to demonstrate the venal, untrustworthy, sometimes stupid, sometimes incompetent, usually self-serving mentalities of those he comes across whether senior politicians, civil servants, aid agency staff or businessmen.

Some of the stories are amusing -the American presenting at a conference in Angola talking about systemic risk in the payments process which concentrates on risks that are irrelevant to a cash-based economy like that in Angola, and which is delivered in English, without a translator to a largely Portuguese-speaking audience says much about the failure to really understand the differences between nations &, the needs of the developing world and displays a cultural condescension that is disturbing. The story of the Chinese officials demanding that the finance minster of an African country should miss a regular World Bank/IMF meeting in favour of meeting a Chinese commercial delegation is hilarious in its details, if not for what it demonstrates. Perhaps more worrying were the US officials whose knowledge of the world outside US shores is so poor that they think China might help them out in something of no benefit to China without some quid pro quo from the US in an area of Chinese interest. One US official even intimates that the State Department will help out US companies with commercial strategies and that the 'fee' might be a sizeable donation to a favoured charity or the US Secretary's own family foundation.

The problem for me, was that none of this was at all surprising - that there are incompetent US politicians and officials who only view world affairs through the prism of US domestic life and experience; that international institutions are often corrupt, incompetent or self-serving or all three; that corruption happens in many ways all across the world; that 'players' are often out for themselves; that narcissism, megalomania & duplicity are commonplace in business and politics. The greatest surprise to me was that a well-educated lawyer like the author should not have seen some of this coming - his gullibility and seeming inability to ask questions first is astonishing. In his acknowledgements he mentions that his family have doubts that publishing the book will be good for his career - I know what they mean: on the basis of the book I wouldn't engage him to advise on politics & international affairs! His naiveté is shocking even if some of the events he narrates took place some time ago and I hope he learned from the experiences (I have my doubts, though).

Overall then, the book does not live up to the claim that it is a "brilliant observation on the anthropology of power". What we are left with is just a string of anecdotes which are unsurprising given the world in which the author plies his trade and which say as much about him as about the people/events he is describing.